CUSTOMER STORY

How The Gamesmen increased their conversion rate by 83% using ProveSource

Maintaining a successful small, independent business in an industry dominated by publicly traded or internationally backed national retailers is not an easy job. 

The Gamesmen, Australia’s longest-running independent Video Game retailer since 1982, is familiar with this challenge. 

The video game industry is ever-growing and exciting, thanks to its contribution to culture, entertainment, and technological advancement. As such, everybody wants a piece of the video game cake, and the market is buzzing with a growing number of retailers looking to increase their conversions.

Andrew Cattarin is the eCommerce Manager for The Gamesmen. Working in a small business means Andrew’s everyday role involves everything from IT, marketing, and website development, to internal processes and business development.

Challenges:

Conversions

How to increase conversion rates in eCommerce is the ultimate question on business owners and marketing managers minds.  Andrew explains it simply:

“Being an eCommerce site, one of our key goals is always a higher conversion rate… it means that customers are finding what they want, at the price they’re happy to pay, and that they trust us enough to transact with us”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Trust

As a small business, The Gamesmen is faced with the challenge of convincing new prospective customers that they are a safe, secure, and trustworthy business to deal with. 

While doing so is easier in their physical retail store, as the busy-store atmosphere is immediately apparent when stepping through The Gamesmen’s door, that feeling didn’t quite translate through the computer screen – but not for a lack of trying.

“We’d added the usual trust factors to the website, such as showing photos of our retail store and making our customer-friendly service policies and guarantees prominent, but the website always lacked a way to give customers a sense of how many other customers are already choosing to shop with us”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

COVID-19

Andrew tells of another challenge, but this one unique to 2020.

While COVID-19 has negatively impacted almost every part of the physical retail industry over the past months, eCommerce businesses have powered through. The gaming industry saw a notable growth as many people turned to gaming titles for maintaining social connections and keeping their minds off the troubles outside.   

Additionally, there has been a massive surge in first time online shoppers due to the ongoing restrictions on retail. 

As this was a new shopping experience for these prospects, the sense of trust was even more vital to convert them into paying customers

“This meant our messaging to new customers needed to be that they’re not alone, and to instil a sense of ‘safety in numbers’ by showing them that the customers who were already shopping with us were receiving the best service possible.”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Solution:

Social Proof

Andrew had been aware of the benefits of social proof on increasing conversion rates and adding credibility to eCommerce businesses, and was on the lookout for the perfect tool for The Gamesmen.

Considering multiple social proof tools, the eventual dealmaker was ProveSource’s support for webhooks. 

By using webhooks, Andrew was able to showcase events not just from The Gamesmen’s website, but also those that transpired on different platforms, such as Zendesk customer support and their VOIP phone system.

“We’ve seen the benefit of showing customers transparency over the number of phone calls we’ve received or support tickets solved in the last few hours & days, to the number of parcels that have been packed or delivered this month - all with the Webhooks feature”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Customization

Andrew was impressed with the large number of features and modifications available for the different types of social proof notifications, and A/B tested many options to see what worked best. 

One such example would be setting a few notifications to ‘show to new customers only’ (a feature requested by Andrew himself!) to reduce notification fatigue for returning customers.

Results:

Increase in Conversions

After implementing ProveSource, Andrew started displaying multiple notifications, all perfectly customized to match The Gamesmen’s unique needs and personal flair. The results followed soon thereafter.

“Globally across all traffic on our website, Google Analytics independently verified that users who interacted with our ProveSource notifications had an 83% higher conversion rate”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Moreover, thanks to hyperlinks placed in the Google reviews notifications to ‘view all reviews’ there was a 10x increase in views of The Gamesmen ‘Reviews & Testimonials’ page. Combined with the fact that Google Analytics was reporting that customers who view this page had an 87% higher conversion rate.

“ProveSource was already paying for itself!”

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Increase in Average Order Value

Users who interacted with social proof had a 15% higher average order value than the average order value of the rest of the orders for the same time period.

Tips for ProveSource Users:

Andrew kindly gave some tips for ProveSource users to utilize and achieve such a massive increase in conversion rates:

  • One of ProveSource’s qualities Andrew appreciates is our customer support service. He encourages users to reach out for support for anything, from help with implementing the social proof notifications, to suggestions and feedback.
    When Andrew had an idea for a feature that could help increase engagement, he reached out and we helped. Here’s what he had to say:

“..They’re always willing to help and even implemented one of our suggestions in a matter of weeks (the ‘show to all, show to new, or show to returning visitors’ feature)“.

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen
  • As a new user once himself, Andrew knows how it feels to start from scratch.
    He highlights the importance of reading some of our articles for the user’s experience:

“For newcomers, the best advice I can offer is to read through their documentation, they’ve got all sorts of gold nuggets in there such as ideal popup wait times, configurations, and statistics they’ve measured across all their customers on what works and what doesn’t”.

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen
  • But what if you’re an experienced ProveSource user who has already experimented with different types of notifications and settings? Well, Andrew has a creative suggestion for you too:

“For existing or advanced customers looking to get more out of ProveSource, it’s worth experimenting with bringing real-world statistics into ProveSource using their Webhook events feature – all it takes is a little thinking outside the box, and a bit of empathy (think about the new customer who’s never heard of your company) – and you’ll see increased conversion rates in no time!”.

Andrew Cattarin
eCommerce Manager, The Gamesmen

Achievements with ProveSource:

The Gamesmen is a specialty gaming and entertainment omnichannel retailer. Serving Australians for over 38 years.

They have a retail store in Penshurst and an online fulfilment warehouse in Riverwood.

Their current range includes video games and accessories, board games, toys, gaming merchandise, and puzzles.

Website

Founded

1982

Location

Penshurst, NSW, Australia

Employees

38

4.8/570+ reviews

4.5/510+ reviews

4.9/5185+ reviews

4.9/567+ reviews

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